Animals in the pampas of Rurrenabaque

I just returned from my trip to Rurrenabaque in the Bolivian Amazon. It was absolutely fantastic and is one of the best memories of my trip - yesterday was my 16-month anniversary. Visiting the Amazon has been one of my dreams for such a long time, so I am ecstatic that I finally did it.

Here are some of my favorite photos from the trip.

[Above] An endless sea of trees. Let's hope it stays that way.

[Below] The Amazon is saturated by many rich colors. Long, narrow boats are the way everybody gets around the brown, muddy rivers.

[Below] Squirrel monkey. I love these monkeys. They are the cutest, friendliest monkeys I've ever seen. I want one!!!

[Below] There are many caimans in the rivers. I'm not sure but I think our guide said that there are also alligators in there. What I am sure of is that the caimans are bigger and black, compared to the alligators. So let's just say that this is a hungry caiman below.


[Below] Mosquitoes. I didn't need mind-bending, anti-malarial drugs to go into the jungle... just a couple of doses of vitamin B injected into my arse. For those wondering, I was only bitten three times while deep in the Amazonas, and this was during an experimental period of two days where I chose not to use repellant.

[Below] Our awesome guide Reynaldo. We all went fishing for piranhas together. Reynaldo said there are three different colors indicating the different levels of aggressiveness. The white is the least aggressive; the red is the most aggressive. I forgot what the other color is... hmm, orange? Below Reynaldo caught a red piranha which we ate for dinner. Tasty.

[Below] We were told the name of this bird but I forgot that too, so I just call it the mohawked, Amazon chicken. It could be right! There were many of them about.

[Below] A flat-billed bird being watched by the early moon.

[Below] Amazonian vegetation by the river.


[Below] A bird sitting in its nest high in the tree (second tree from the left) as the sun begins to rise.

[Below] A hungry caiman waiting for a wrong move.

[Below] In the jungle you can chose between a jungle tour and a pampas tour. In the jungle you see a forest of high trees and you go walking in among them for a few days, identifying all the different species. I did the pampas tour which is where you see animals. Many, many animals! The pampa is lowland vegetation and swamps.

[Below] One of the universal features of a pampas tour is the search for an anaconda - the largest snake in the world. Unfortunately during dry season they are very hard to find. We only managed to find two which had died a long time before - Reynaldo said they were probably killed by eagles.

[Below] The sunset over the pampas.

[Below] The capybara is the world's largest rodent. It looks like a half rat, half pig animal mated with an enormous guinea pig. Don't rule this out as its origin... it's a possibility.



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